Martha Ivers is one of the most complex characters of the 1940s. She’s at once selfish, rationalizing, tender, and murderous, an alpha queen yearning for lost innocence while entrapped in a loveless marriage with a blackmailer. The role is squarely in Barbara Stanwyck’s wheelhouse, and she doesn't miss. Reviving the hard-boiled mannerisms of Phyllis Dietrichson, Stanwyck also gives us glimmers of a tormented inner life, prefiguring her turn as a conflicted lover in There’s Always Tomorrow.

Red Sparrow starts off promisingly enough, with a fierce-looking JLaw flossing her talent for identifying human vulnerability while training at Charlotte Rampling's School for Gifted Honeypots. But the film unaccountably abandons her "Sparrow" skills once she takes the field. (Imagine following Gordon Liu through his 36 Chambers training only to have him pull out a Glock to mow down baddies.) It devolves into an extended "Previously on The Americans" clip, in which several would-be meticulously planned and executed target-running operations…